Some things are worth noticing, but aren't worth writing down. They just aren't that important or useful. This is about the other things.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

In the cards

About ten years ago, when our daughter Courtney was attending the Aspen
Music Festival, I flew out to see her perform. I met Jordan Allen, a
cellist Courtney had met in college. I am generally shy, it takes time for me to engage on deep personal levels
with people I don't know well. But Jordan liked that I was a writer. His enthusiasm to get acquainted and trade artist stories was uncontainable. It
took fewer than five minutes to hear about things which might have taken someone else years and possibly as many drinks to disclose. I loved this open, guileless young man immediately.

After Aspen ended, Jordan, who called me Movie Mommy, shared regular updates over the phone - the men in his life he hoped would make him happy, and the ones who would not.Once, during a bleak stretch, Jordan asked me how anyone could
ever know if real love, marriage and children were even in the cards for them. That conversation, more than any other, stayed with me. The only answer I could offer, as unhelpful as it was true, was time.

Jordan joined the Madison Symphony Orchestra and got his life gig underway. His updates, less frequent but
longer, kept me up to speed for a while.

A year passed, and then two, when I saw on Facebook that
Jordan had become engaged.

I had no words that could convey my joy for him. And yet, later that week, didn't Jordan email me and ask me to
write the reading for his wedding? Yes, he did.

And, so, with Jordan's permission, I'm posting my little contribution to the celebration of hard-earned love, which, yes, it turns out, is in those cards.